The Bucket List Read online

  John shook his head.

  “No, it’s just me.”

  It felt lonely when he said it aloud. Especially when comparing it with Trevor’s new life as the father of a young child. John had difficulty seeing himself in that role. Granted, he was younger, but it wasn’t really about that. Several colleagues his own age in New York had had one or two kids. It was really the experience of growing up as the child of a dysfunctional marriage that had left its mark on him.

  His parents’ love story was a shining example of how “opposites attract” was a poor strategy for choosing a life partner. His father originally came from Nigeria and had moved to New York City in the mid-sixties. John had heard the story of how he had met his mother many times. Not as a romance, but as a cautionary tale of how women can turn men’s heads. A blonde twenty-six-year-old woman from Sweden had walked into the bar where his dad worked in the South Bronx. She was in New York on an art scholarship and was living in the neighborhood. One thing led to another and a year later she was pregnant. He left America for her sake and they bought the house in Sweden that became John’s childhood home.

  “Think with your big head, not your little one. The only good thing to come out of our marriage is you,” his dad would say years later, as they sat at the kitchen table in the apartment on the Lower East Side.

  By then, John was a teenager and sick of hearing stories about his mother. He had been twelve when his parents separated, and his dad took him back to New York. There, his dad had borrowed money to buy a bodega on Eldridge Street.

  Which memories of his mother were his own and which had come from Dad’s stories, he wasn’t sure. But the fact that she hated her job and took every chance she got to paint instead was something he did remember. She would be cleaning her brushes in the kitchen when he got home from school. The embraces she pulled him into smelled of cigarettes, cheap wine, and turpentine.

  “Your mother didn’t understand what being a family involved. She drank and messed around with paint instead of taking care of you. And helping out with the money was something she had zero interest in.”

  John was surprised how much of his father’s lecturing had stuck. But if you boiled down the sum total of his wisdom, there were really only two takeaways: work hard and look out for women. As a teenager, he hadn’t much liked that message. Nevertheless, he had, subconsciously, taken it on board. There had never really been a lack of women—John could thank his looks for that. But he had never had any long, more serious relationships. Work always came first.

  When Dad passed away a few years ago, the pastor had asked whether John wanted to say a few words at the funeral. At first, he accepted. He stayed up all night, pen in hand. In the end, he just got angry with him. His dad had gone on and on about what a hopeless person his ex-wife was. But on the rare occasions when John had asked about his mother or their years in Sweden, the answer had always been the same—that it wasn’t something he needed to think about. All he needed to know was that the two of them were better off without her.

  When he had gone to bed, the script for the funeral address consisted of just one single world. Bastard. Crossed out twice—once his conscience caught up with him for writing it. The next morning, he called the pastor and requested an extra hymn instead.

  John was so absorbed in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the doctor standing in the room. She must have crept in while his dreamy, morphine-addled brain had been time-traveling.

  Trevor once again apologized for mistaking her for the nurse. The doctor turned to John, who immediately felt the back of his head beginning to throb again. He remembered the claustrophobic sensation from that morning when he had lain with his head inside a metal tube listening to the sound of the MRI.

  “The X-rays look good,” she said, while John tried to read her facial expression. It was difficult. She looked serious, although the news she was delivering sounded positive.

  “There’s no trace of any suffusion or bleeding from the trauma to your head. We can’t find any physical issues that would explain your pain,” she continued.

  John had been expecting a “but,” which didn’t come. Instead, it was silently present in the word “physical.” She couldn’t find any physical problems. All that left were psychological ones.

  He was obviously aware that the point at the back of his head that hurt was where Trevor had pressed the pistol for those long seconds when he had thought his life was over. But at the same time, he simply couldn’t accept the doctor’s easy diagnosis. Psychosomatic—that was the word her profession adopted when their knowledge could take them no further.

  “So, you mean it’s all in my head?” he said.

  She must have detected the hint of hostility in his voice, because she took a half step back from the bed. It was done unconsciously, but it was obvious enough for an undercover agent trained in body language to notice.

  “I didn’t say that. All I was saying was that we didn’t see anything on the MRI that deviates from the norm.”

  “And what are your conclusions based on that?”

  “That we have to keep looking for the cause of the pain. There are some neurological tests we can run, but we can’t rule out emotional trauma.”

  “Then I suggest you run those tests,” he said, the words sounding harsher than he intended.

  The doctor responded by jotting a few lines in the notebook that she always seemed to carry around. Then she smiled and said that the nurse would be in shortly to re-dress his wounds. The fact that John had taken out his frustration and powerlessness on her didn’t seem to have dampened her mood.

  When she left, Trevor turned toward him.

  “It’s probably best if we start behaving ourselves,” he said. “Otherwise she might cut down our morphine.”

  “Don’t bite the hand that drugs you,” John replied, pleased to have found a rejoinder he thought Trevor would appreciate. And he was right—Trevor laughed so loudly the guard outside peered in to check that everything was alright.

  After his wounds had been re-dressed and the bags of fluids changed, Trevor said he was going to rest. John supposed he ought to do the same, but he wasn’t tired after his long slumber in the morning.

  He opened the laptop again and pulled up the Swedish investigation file, scrolling through the witness statements from the house where Emelie Bjurwall had been to a party the same night she had disappeared. The most interesting account was from a kid named Magnus Aglin. He was twenty years old and the host of the party, which had taken place at his father’s house.

  Magnus seemed to have known Emelie for a long time. Her childhood home was just a kilometer from the Aglins’ house.

  John pulled up the six-page transcript of the interview. It had taken place at the police station in Karlstad the day after the disappearance, and had been led by Detective Inspector Anton Lundberg.

  INSPECTOR LUNDBERG: How did Emelie seem?

  INTERVIEWEE AGLIN: What do you mean?

  LUNDBERG: Well, was she her usual self?

  AGLIN: Yes, I guess so. She was happy. In a party mood.

  LUNDBERG: Drunk?

  AGLIN: I imagine so.

  LUNDBERG: How drunk was she?

  AGLIN: As drunk as everyone else.

  LUNDBERG: I understand. Was she drunk when she arrived?

  AGLIN: Like, yeah.

  LUNDBERG: “Like”? How am I meant to interpret that, Magnus?

  AGLIN: Well, she was drunk when she got there. She’d had a few drinks.

  LUNDBERG: Do you know where Emelie had been before she came to your party? Did she say anything about that?

  AGLIN: I don’t know. She had probably warmed up somewhere else.

  LUNDBERG: Was it just alcohol at the party?

  AGLIN: What do you mean?

  John understood where Lundberg had been going with this. Emelie’s parents had found a bag with traces of cocaine in it in a drawer in her bedroom. It was perfectly plausible that she had taken it before arriving at t
he party. But Magnus hadn’t noticed that Emelie had been under the influence of anything other than alcohol. He also denied that there had been drugs at the party. John wished the detective had pushed the boy harder on that point. After all, these were spoiled upper-class kids and if Sweden was anything like the States, cocaine was the most popular drug in those circles.

  The tattoo on the girl’s forearm was another thing that Lundberg had taken an interest in.

  LUNDBERG: As you know, a photo of Emelie’s tattoo was posted on Facebook the night she disappeared.

  AGLIN: Yes.

  LUNDBERG: I’m curious—do you know why she has that specific tattoo?

  AGLIN: It’s a bucket list of things she wants to do before she dies.

  LUNDBERG: Did she tell you that?

  AGLIN: Yeah.

  LUNDBERG: Okay. And whenever she does any of these things on the list, she has a tick tattooed into the box? Have I understood correctly?

  AGLIN: Yes, I think so.

  LUNDBERG: Do you know what’s on Emelie’s list?

  AGLIN: No. She wouldn’t say. She doesn’t like talking about it, period. The thing about it being a bucket list, I had to drag that out of her.

  LUNDBERG: In the photo uploaded to Facebook, the final tick has been carved using something sharp. Do you know if she did it herself that evening?

  AGLIN: Not that I saw.

  LUNDBERG: Did anything happen at the party that might have caused her to carve that tick?

  AGLIN: How should I know? Like I told you, she didn’t want to talk about the tattoo.

  John opened the browser and searched for “bucket list + tattoo.” The search brought up countless images and links to tattoo parlors around the world. But he couldn’t find a single picture that showed three checkboxes in a row. Emelie Bjurwall’s tattoo seemed to be unique and decidedly personal.

  LUNDBERG: Think hard, Magnus—did Emelie say or do anything that evening that made you react? Something that stood out? Anything?

  AGLIN: No. Like what? I wasn’t with her that much. I talked to them in the beginning but then I was mostly out by the hot tub and …

  LUNDBERG: Them? Which them?

  AGLIN: Emelie and that other girl.

  LUNDBERG: The other girl—who was that?

  AGLIN: I don’t know. A friend, I guess. They came together.

  LUNDBERG: Okay. So, when Emelie arrived at the party, she came with this female friend?

  AGLIN: Yes.

  LUNDBERG: What do you know about her?

  AGLIN: Like, nothing. I’ve never seen her before.

  LUNDBERG: Isn’t she from round here?

  AGLIN: No, I don’t think so. I would have recognized her if she was.

  LUNDBERG: So, you spoke to her?

  AGLIN: Just a few words.

  LUNDBERG: What did she say?

  AGLIN: How am I supposed to remember that? Nothing in particular. Just the sort of stuff you say at parties.

  LUNDBERG: Like what?

  AGLIN: Haven’t you ever been to a party? I guess I asked if she was having a good time or something.

  John could feel the interrogator’s frustration. Something told him that a brisk smack on the side of the head might have done Magnus Aglin some good. But Lundberg had displayed—at least according to the transcript—an impressive degree of patience and hadn’t allowed himself to be provoked.

  LUNDBERG: Do you remember the friend’s name?

  AGLIN: Emelie called her Maja, I think.

  LUNDBERG: But you’re not absolutely sure?

  AGLIN: Yes, she said Maja.

  LUNDBERG: Last name?

  AGLIN: No idea.

  LUNDBERG: What did this Maja look like?

  AGLIN: Well, pretty good-looking, I guess. Dark hair. Slim. A bit too short for my taste.

  LUNDBERG: Age?

  AGLIN: Same as us, or maybe a year older.

  Lundberg hadn’t gotten any more than that out of him. John decided to take a break from reading the interview and rest. He wanted to find out more about Maja. She ought to be able to tell them more about Emelie—she could provide the key to the missing girl’s state of mind and tell them what they’d been up to on the night in question.

  He looked for an interview with her in the files, but strangely enough there was nothing. Instead, he skimmed the transcriptions from the police interviews with the other partygoers. They didn’t know who Maja was either and weren’t able to do much more than confirm Magnus Aglin’s description of her. John continued reading the investigator’s notes from the conversation with Emelie Bjurwall’s parents. It was the same story. They didn’t know anyone by the name of Maja and had never heard their daughter talk about a friend with that name.

  It was all very peculiar, John thought to himself. This young woman had clearly been at Magnus Aglin’s party, together with Emelie and around twenty other people. Despite this, no one had provided the investigators with enough information for them to find and question her.

  John continued going through the investigation records and noticed how the police had expanded their search to a wider and wider area. Inquiries had been made at the hotels and hostels in Karlstad and its surroundings. But none of them had had a guest by the name of Maja on the dates in question.

  The School of Economics in Stockholm had also been contacted, as well as the treatment center where Emelie had been a resident for a period. But these—and a large number of other initiatives—had all been fruitless. The investigators seemed to have done what they could to find the mysterious friend. Yet the fact remained—and it was undeniably a strange one—that ten years later, Maja’s identity still remained unknown.

  John returned to the final part of the interview with Magnus Aglin. Lundberg had concentrated on finding out more about Emelie Bjurwall’s departure from the party.

  LUNDBERG: Do you know what time it was when she left the house?

  AGLIN: Yes, it was just after twelve.

  LUNDBERG: How do you know that? There are so many other things you don’t remember.

  AGLIN: I tried to get her to stay. I checked my phone and said she couldn’t leave at midnight.

  LUNDBERG: Why did you want her to stay?

  AGLIN: If you’re having a party, you don’t want people cutting out too early. Especially not Emelie.

  LUNDBERG: “Especially not Emelie?”

  AGLIN: She’s a classy addition to a party. Especially since she came back from Stockholm. Before, you couldn’t see what she looked like in those crappy hoodies she used to wear. Whatever—the point is, it’s not good if the AckWe princess leaves. People might get the impression I throw lame parties.

  LUNDBERG: Did she say why she was leaving?

  AGLIN: She was meeting someone.

  John looked up from the screen. The more he read, the more interested he became. Given that his mother had taken the step of sending him the investigation, he felt obliged to try to understand what had happened to that girl. He focused and continued reading.

  LUNDBERG: Who was she going to meet?

  AGLIN: She didn’t say.

  LUNDBERG: What did she say?

  AGLIN: Just that she was going to meet someone and would be back later.

  LUNDBERG: But she didn’t come back later, did she?

  AGLIN: No.

  LUNDBERG: Did she leave by herself?

  AGLIN: I think so.

  LUNDBERG: Her friend, Maja, didn’t go with her?

  AGLIN: No, she stayed—I’m sure about that.

  LUNDBERG: What was Emelie like when she left?

  AGLIN: What do you mean?

  LUNDBERG: Well, was she angry, sad, nervous, frightened, or anything like that?

  AGLIN: No, nothing like that. She seemed totally cool.

  LUNDBERG: And you didn’t get the impression something had happened? That she’d had a fight or anything like that?

  AGLIN: Not that she told me about.

  LUNDBERG: Do you think she was meeting a guy?

  AGLIN:
Maybe.

  LUNDBERG: “Maybe”? If you know something, Magnus, it’s important you tell me about it.

  AGLIN: But I don’t know anything. Maybe she was going to meet a guy. Or a girl. Or Papa Smurf. Don’t you get it? I. Don’t. Know.

  LUNDBERG: Okay, okay. Is there anyone who might know?

  AGLIN: Yeah, that girl she came to the party with. Maja. She probably knows.

  LUNDBERG: Anyone else?

  AGLIN: Maybe—Emelie knew lots of people at the party. Those of us who grew up out here have been hanging out together for a long time. I guess you should do your job and talk to them. Isn’t that what the police do? Question people? Are we done now?

  That was it. Lundberg had released the insufferable Magnus Aglin and done exactly what the boy had suggested. It was his job, after all. He had asked the same question of everyone who had been at the party and to a number of other people in Emelie’s circle. But as with the question of her friend, Maja, the result was disheartening. No one knew who Emelie had agreed to meet that night.

  8

  KARLSTAD, 2009

  He couldn’t remember when they had last eaten take-out pizza. Sissela opened the lid of hers and cut it up in the box. Heimer got plates and asked her to transfer the slices onto the china. They had to maintain some minimum standards.

  They sat at the kitchen island with a view out over Lake Vänern and the fairway. A couple of sailboats running on their engines moved slowly past, heading toward the harbor in Karlstad. It was getting dark, so all Heimer could see were the lanterns and silhouettes of the boats’ hulls and masts.

  Sissela’s gaze also lingered on the view through the window while she ground the food down with her molars. She had seemed hopeful after the meeting with the two police detectives—and calmer, too, once she had taken control and the search had been initiated. But now she was back to waiting and it was something Heimer knew she didn’t like. Perhaps she had expected a quick result. The phone should have rung already, with Gorbachev reporting that Emelie had been found.

  Heimer took a mouthful of wine—a Chianti Classico from 1997. It was obviously overkill for the lumps of dough on the table. He had read that production output had been lower than usual that year, since there had been frost in April that had damaged the crop. But the few grapes that had been harvested were clearly of the best quality. He could sense the characteristic sharpness in his mouth. Chianti was one of his favorite regions in the old world, and even though many claimed it was overpriced, you really did get what you paid for.